


What Lies Beneath

by Too_Many_Seeds



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Implied Future Angst, Some dark themes, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 13:46:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17899226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Too_Many_Seeds/pseuds/Too_Many_Seeds
Summary: Rook’s noticed her husband’s absences, even if she doesn’t understand what they mean.





	What Lies Beneath

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Kind of dark themes due to context. Implied future angst and further conflict.

She didn’t want to say a word; she didn’t want to ask him, to broach the subject and bring the walls of her warmly built romance crashing around her. Rook stood in the kitchen, staring down at the vegetable bake that she had made for dinner, where they would sit at the cloth-covered table she had set and where she would have to ask him.

She set the baking dish on the grill to cool, and turned back towards the bench; her keys, phone and purse still scattered across them from when she had arrived home from the station. The staff meeting had run late, yet the message she had sent to inform her husband still flashed as unread.

The dishes she chose for dinner had been bought at the local second-hand shop; one of the first things she and Jacob had bought when she’d moved into their cabin in the woods. They had wandered the small interior of the shop, carefully perusing what they could afford. John had once offered to lend them some money while they settled in together, but they had both refused; for her, it was a matter of pride but for him, it was weakness. Needing to be a little thrifty wasn’t something new to him, after all.

They had settled on plain bowls with floral patterns along the rims; bright flowers dotting the sides cheerily.

Rook set them against the table and frowned as their ceramic periwinkles and daisies mocked her with the memory of her husband, who had traced the rims with raised eyebrows but relented and let her have her way. He tended to do that. Her late mother had once said he would give her the world if she would only ask for it.

From the next room, the door opened and her stomach sank. She had planned to at least have dished out dinner first; her vegetable bake serving as a buffer to the prickly nature of the situation. Rook heard him kick his shoes off haphazardly by the entrance - she was always telling him not to do that - and then his steady footfalls came to the kitchen doorway. She did not turn around to face him - greet him - while she used a tea towel to pick up the baking dish and bring it over to their small table. There was a muffled thud as she set it down in the center with perhaps too much force, before she tossed the towel over the nearest chair.

He stepped into the kitchen sniffing and she heard a soft rumble from his stomach. He hadn’t taken lunch again then, and she resisted the urge to scold him for it, instead sitting in her chair. A stray thought crossed her head, something that Jacob had once mentioned in passing when they’d visited the Fang Center once; that the alpha wolf always ate first.

She helped herself and let the serving spoon fall back into the dish with a loud clatter. He approached the table, sinking in his seat with an almost audible sigh.

“Smells good,” Jacob said by way of greeting. Rook nodded, pursing her lips. He waited for a beat, and sighed. “I’m late, I know.”

She paused for a moment, fork poised above her bowl, but then she dug in, stabbing into a piece of potato and bringing it to her lips. She could feel her husband’s stare burning into the side of her head, but she didn’t answer.

The clink of cutlery on ceramic was deafening.

“Not gonna say anything?” He asks, voice impossibly soft. This was one of the days where she wished he would get angry; she almost wished he would storm over to her and make her look at him. It would be easier to meet him then, wrath to wrath, and spit her fury.

But he was calm, he was soft, he was utterly frustrating. And instead, she was the one left with anger to soothe her heart.

“This how it’s gonna be?” He sighed, helping himself to his own serving of the meal. He placed the spoon back down and rolled his shoulders slowly, languidly working out the cricks from the day.

She said nothing, eyes trained on the creamy cauliflower in her bowl.

“M’kay,” he said softly. He grabbed his bowl and stood, chair screeching as it was pushed away. His footsteps were heavy as he made his way to the kitchen, likely intending to eat in the living room; the old-timey sitcoms nicer company than herself.

He was at the doorway to the next room when she finally spoke up.

“Are you cheating on me?” Rook asked, and then immediately cringed. It sounded dramatic, like something out of one of the bad soap operas that played in the station’s waiting room during the afternoon.

Jacob stopped in the doorway, and she finally looked up at him, praying that she didn’t look as horrendously desperate as she sounded.

“Am I  _what?_ ” He asked, eyes narrowed.

She opened her mouth to speak again, but the words failed her; the adrenaline of confrontation making her head dizzy and words harder to summon.

“Y-you heard,” she stammered out, wincing at how pathetic it sounded. She swallowed audibly and then pushed her chair back; the wood scraping against the cabin floor. “I asked if you were cheating on me.”

He turned back around to face her, stepping into the kitchen and setting his bowl down onto the bench.

“And what,” Jacob began slowly, “the  _fuck_ makes you think that?”

She almost lost her nerve; the barely concealed anger in his voice making her hesitate. Had she insulted him? Perhaps that was a good sign, that he was so angered by the mere suggestion of being unfaithful.

But she, ego bruised from weeks of absence, had already started.

“You’re always late,” Rook continued, babbling slightly, “you’re always ‘working’ late hours. You never let me come visit you during the day and…you’re hiding something from me, and I  _hate_ that I sound paranoid and delusional and just…please  _tell_ me.” She took in a deep breath, interrupting the stream of babbles, gnawing at her bottom lip. “Please, just…tell me if I’m being delusional, or paranoid, or every inch the  _fucking_ stereotype of a clingy wife.”

She wished she was a better reader of her husband. Jacob had a habit of becoming the unattainable wall; a brick barrier between her and his innermost thoughts. She knew it was reflexive of him, but she couldn’t help but sometimes wonder what it was that was so deep and dark that he would seek to keep it hidden from his wife.

He shook his head, fingers clenching into a fist on the bench, inches away from the cooling meal she had made.

“I would never”- Jacob broke off, grimacing and struggling to contain his indignation. He locked eyes with her. “You’re my  _wife.”_ He spat the word, emphasising it as though it meant everything to him. “The fuck makes you think I would look  _twice_ at anyone else?”

She felt her cheeks flush red, the embarrassment falling on her at his denial. Was she paranoid? She remembered the conversation she’d had with Hudson just the other day, how the other woman had mentioned her former girlfriend had gotten distant just before their break-up.

_“Always ignoring my messages, always ‘working’…yeah, that was code for ‘fucking her ex’.”_

“Can you blame me?” Rook asked, and hated how her voice sounded so small. “You’re never home. I never see you. Maybe the reason I feel like an afterthought is because I’m being treated like one.”

He flinched as though she had physically struck him, and perhaps she would have felt guilty if she wasn’t so determined.

“I know…I’ve been busy,” Jacob said slowly, as though the words pained him, and maybe they did, “but you”- he raised a finger to point at her, reminiscent of the old Uncle Sam wartime pose- “are the furthest,  _fucking_ thing to an afterthought.” He swallowed again, anger or something else making him nearly gag. “Everything I do, I do for  _you_.”

She smiled, but it wasn’t a nice smile.

“I’m sure that would be very touching,” she began, “if you would actually tell me what you do.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“I’ve told you,” he replied, but his voice was flat. “I run a training camp. Started out with vets, moved on to anyone who wanted to join. I help”-

She interrupted him.

“Your brother’s church?” Rook supplied, tilting her head and meeting his eyes. “The one we keep getting reports on at work?”  _Oh fuck,_ she wasn’t supposed to talk about this; Whitehorse had already been concerned about having her involved. She reached up to press her fingers on the bridge of her nose. “Fuck, Jacob. You think I haven’t seen them? Think I haven’t seen the pictures of armed gunmen stationed outside your brother’s church? What the fuck is going on?”

“Everything is…more complicated than you think.”

“Is that supposed to reassure me?”

“No,” he muttered, running a hand over his chin, as though the hairs of his beard were more irritating than anything else in that situation. “But I need you to  _trust_ me. To trust that I know what I’m doing, and that I’m doing everything for  _you.”_

She was silent, and she felt her leg begin to bounce slightly, shaking in the anxiety and she couldn’t bring herself to calm enough to stop it.

“I’m hearing some real fucked up things about your brother,” Rook said in a broken voice. “About the church.”

“About  _me_ ,” Jacob finished for her, grim but otherwise unreadable.

Her silence gave him his answer.

“I don’t want to believe them, Jake,” she said, voice pleading and her eyes wide. She pursed her lips and stared to the side, to the abandoned dinner on the table; dish of periwinkles and daisies winking mockingly up at her. She glanced back up at her husband, who she knew would give her the world - in ways she didn’t even understand yet - and her voice was soft. “Just…  _tell_ me what’s going on.”

In the silence of their kitchen, she could only hear the occasional rattling of the stove as it cooled and the gentle wind knocking at the loose sill of their window.

He stepped towards her, footsteps heavy on the creaking floorboards.

“Alright,” Jacob muttered, and slowly reached forward to place a hand on her shoulder. She met his eyes, and despite his relenting, she wondered why he looked like he’d lost so much more. “You wanna know?”

Rook wondered if she was imagining the edge of a plea to his voice; a final chance to say ‘no’ and together they would brush it under the rug, never to unearth again.

She nodded.

“Yeah,” she replied, soft as his hand came to cup the side of her cheek.

His eyes didn’t leave hers as he froze, holding her in place against him -  _with_ him - as though she were a lifeline.

“This Sunday,” Jacob said, voice a promise, “we’ll go to Joseph’s.” He closed his eyes, leaning forward to press his forehead against hers in a strange sort of embrace. “We’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

Maybe she should have insisted, should have put her foot down and demanded her truth then and there, but a selfish part of her wanted to avoid it. His reaction, the atmosphere and an oft-ignored instinct made her believe deep down that there was so much more to this than mere unfaithfulness.

“Okay,” Rook replied, leaning into his touch as she had since the first time he had been brave enough to take her in his arms.

He held her close in their bed that night as he had countless others; warm and soft against him. The foreboding had not left her, but she still snuggled in close to him, an arm over his middle and her cheek against his chest; hearing his heartbeat proudly. He was her husband still - always would be - and she had missed him in his absence.

There was no shame as she kissed him goodnight in their marriage bed. But she wondered why it felt like a farewell.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading <3


End file.
